October 8, 2012

Among likely voters. Last month, Romney trailed by 8 points. That means Romney has picked up 12 points!

People even like Romney more!

Coming out of the debate, Mitt Romney’s personal image has improved. His favorable rating has hit 50% among registered voters for the first time in Pew Research Center surveys and has risen five points since September. At the same time, Obama’s personal favorability rating has fallen from 55% to 49%.

ADDED: Over at Nate Silver's blog at the NYT, commenters are begging him to update his latest post, which is from last night and has the reassuring title "National Polls Show Signs of Settling." His readers need absorbing this news:

Where are you Nat? Reassure about the Pew poll...

Silver's all about processing/massaging the data, and he does seem to minister to the sensitivities of NYT readers.

UPDATE: Shortly after midnight, Silver answered the call for help. (I'll do a new post about it.)

This is a very good result for Romney. However, it's not necessarily inconsistent with what we've seen in the tracking polls, which is that Mitt saw a big bounce on Thursday and Friday which plateaued and may have begun to recede by Sunday. We shall see.

I don't read Nate Silver often, but he seems reasonably good at what he does -- he does seem to know (better than me, at least) what is going into the polls and how to read them.

That said, he confessed earlier in this cycle that the polls do not make sense -- not because they're going against his pet candidate (Obama, and they weren't at the time), but because the local and national numbers don't match, polls in different locales suggest oddly different results, and the cross-tabs look weird.

Geez! It's almost like some of us on here predicted! We must be psychic! Or maybe we just know how to read polls, and human nature.

NNNaaaaahhhhh.

Where's your Rasmussen from last eek now Garage?

More predictions...

the media will spin this as good for Zero because more people are paying attention, and that means all Zero has to do is show up and smile, and the elections in the bag. Smile because they don't dare trust him to open his pie hole again without a minder.

Shiloh, GM, and the usual clueless gang will come on spiking the football about the massaged poll numbers that are going to come out tomorrow. Also the massaged unemployment numbers. Those numbers will be quietly downgraded again starting i the middle of next week, and full blown retreat the last weekend of the month so that next months jump in unemployment won't be as stark.

These guys are easy to predict...say and do anything to protect the holy grail of liberalism...the affirmative action president.

You dont see theObama signs in the yards this year and the bumper stickers are thinned considerably. The rigged polls have the proles believing that Obama has wom so there is little reason for them to lug themselves to the polls. The people,of good faith who voted for Obama because of his rhetoric or his skin color wont be doing it again this year. I predict a stunning Romney win and gob smacked surprise by pollster and pundit alike.

You dont see theObama signs in the yards this year and the bumper stickers are thinned considerably. The rigged polls have the proles believing that Obama has wom so there is little reason for them to lug themselves to the polls. The people,of good faith who voted for Obama because of his rhetoric or his skin color wont be doing it again this year. I predict a stunning Romney win and gob smacked surprise by pollster and pundit alike.

Pew is a lousy outfit no matter what they project. They are all over the place prior to elections and only come close close to the election. Rasmussen gets much closer to the actual outcomes way before the election.

Don’t get too excited about that Pew poll showing Romney up four points and closing in on 50%. Their sample was R+5, which seems about as likely as the D+9 sample in the dumbass poll Politico released today.

This year the polls for multple reasons are crap. The polls will only reflect the actuall election results one week to ten days out.

There are no real undecided voters, thats all bull. There are Obama voters from 2008 who may not vote to reelect him in November. I hardly belive anyone who voted for McCain in 2008 is going to vote for Romney. If Romney wins, he will win because of Romney democrats. At the end of the day evey voter will ask himself do I belive Obama desrves to be reelected or is Romney a better choice than the proven track record that Obama represents. Obama caught a perfect wave four years ago, but this time the waves are against him. Obama has no record of achievemnt to run on so all he has left is to convince the democrats who may vote for Romney that Romney will be far worse than he will be in a second term. Can he do that? Maybe but that isn't an easy task and he has little time to do it and if the last debate and today's speech is any indication, Romney isn't going to cooperate in his defeat.

This is a bad year for polling. I'm not doing any snoopy dances until November.

That said, I believe Obama's numbers have been consistently overestimated for months. The debate broke the spell that Obama is the inevitable winner, contrary to all the media drumbeating to that effect, and that he is an especially brilliant politician. It also showed that Romney is a perfectly fine presidential candidate.

I wouldn't sweat the polls. Fingers crossed, the worst is over. Obama is about out of ammunition and various chickens are coming home to roost. Romney has emerged as his own man, and not the caricature of him created by the Obama campaign and the media.

So now they're oversampling Republicans to set up the Comeback Kid meme in a week or two.

I wouldn't be surprised. Remember how PPP ridiculously oversampled Republicans in that MO poll, which encouraged Akin to say in the race. So I don't put anything past them.

These are good tidings; I have no doubt the debate has had a powerful effect on the race; but I take all polls with a grain of salt, no matter which way they lean. I trust some (e.g. Rasmussen) only enough to tell me this: Romney can win. Not that he will, but he has excellent chances. Our side has to keep motivated.

The narrative of Obama's inevitable victory was always a big load of crap.

The two University of Colorado professors who have correctly predicted the results of every presidential election since 1980 (including the popular/electoral college split in 2000) have updated their August prediction.

I was wondering when the polls would start shifting R-ward. The polling companies are not stupid, but they are in a tough position. They want to support Obama but also want to continue their business after the election. If their poll results are widely off from the election results, why should anyone pay money or attention to them ever again?

As the election approaches, the polls will become increasingly more accurate. They have to, or many pollsters will be out of their jobs.

The electorate may be R+2 or R+3 this year among voters. Rasmussen reported the electorate at election time was R+ 1.3 in 2010 and D+7.6 in 2008. We know how those turned out. My understanding is that Rasmussen is still using a D+3 for his latest polls, but he's reporting that Likely Voter party affiliation was R+ 2.6 for September.

Romney’s “bounce” mostly is the result of a direct comparison of the President and the Governor by viewers of last week’s debate. I dunno that opinions formed in such a manner are as susceptible to the idiotic memes and talking points of the respective campaigns.

We all knew the pollsters would have to correct their D and R sample percentages or face loss of credibility... Obama's poor performance gave them the perfect chance to hide the jump and blame him... if I read this one right, the sample is nearly even between D and R.